Page:Researches respecting the Book of Sindibad and Portuguese Folk-Tales.djvu/16

iv but the narrator was evidently unaware that these creatures had a maternal interest in the Hearth-Cat, The troubles of Maria do Pau, the heroine of No. 16, are very much the same as those of the German Allerleirauh, the Norse Katie Woodencloak, the English Catskin, the Scotch Rashie-Coat, and all the rest of her sister sufferers in divers lands—mysterious maidens of high degree, who to escape from an incestuous marriage voluntarily envelope themselves in a rough husk, represented in the present instance by a dress made of wood.

The widely-spread story to which the name of "The Supplanted Bride" may be given, in which the real bride is set on one side, and sometimes even put to death by a step-sister, or serving-maid, or some other impostor who assumes her place, appears four times. No. 2 begins with the Rapunzel's hair-ladder opening. The impostor is a negro woman, who transforms the heroine into a bird by running a pin into her head. No. 3 is the same narrative with a different opening, being the strange story of the three citrons, out of each of which when opened emerges "a most lovely maid," who immediately dies if she is not supplied with water to drink. The story is familiar to the South of Europe, and has even made its way to the North, being No. 66 of Asbjörnsen's Norse Tales ("Tales from the Fjeld," No. 25). In No. 9 the